He then goes on to cite many passages from Homer, Hesiod, and Socrates, and other ancient writers, showing that they abound in excellent maxims, which a Christian may very well apply to his own benefit. A Christian student, he says, should follow the example of the bees, who draw out honey from flowers which seem only proper to charm the eye, or gratify the smell. But then they must also imitate them, in only selecting those flowers that yield honey; and when they extract the sweet juices, let them be careful to leave the poison behind. In like manner we should gather together from the heathen literature whatever may be useful, and leave what is pernicious to morals behind.[19] This was but saying what Plato and Cicero had said before him, and it cannot be charged to the account of a Christian prelate as narrow bigotry, that he should insist on at least as much reserve in the use of profane writers as had been required by the pagan moralists themselves.
It cannot be supposed that the Christian prelates were insensible to the dangers incurred by students in the State academies. St. Chrysostom, indeed, who knew what they were by experience, and who was certainly the last man to undervalue a knowledge of letters, was induced to weigh the arguments for and against a public school education, and decides that the risk is too great to be compensated for by any intellectual advantage. He declares that he knows of no school in his neighbourhood where the study of profane literature can be found united to the teaching of virtue; and this being the case, he considers that Christian parents will generously sacrifice the superior tuition given in the State gymnasia, and send their children to be brought up in a monastery. His words are the more remarkable from the extreme moderation of their tone, and the evident reluctance with which he advocates a course of conduct which must needs place the faithful at a disadvantage. They are also important as showing how very early the monasteries began to be regarded as places of education, for seculars as well as religious. “If you have masters among you,” he writes,[20] “who can answer for the virtue of your children, I should be very far from advocating your sending them to a monastery; on the contrary, I should strongly insist on their remaining where they are. But if no one can give such a guarantee, we ought not to send children to schools where they will learn vice before they learn science, and where in acquiring learning of relatively small value, they will lose what is far more precious, their integrity of soul. Are we then to give up literature? you will exclaim. I do not say that; but I do say that we must not kill souls.... When the foundations of a building are sapped, we should seek rather for architects to reconstruct the whole edifice, than for artists to adorn the walls. In fact, the choice lies between two alternatives; a liberal education which you may get by sending your children to the public schools, or the salvation of their souls, which you secure by sending them to the monks. Which is to gain the day, science or the soul? If you can unite both advantages, do so by all means; but if not, choose the most precious.”[21]
It will be apparent from what has been said, that the State academies of the Empire are not to be numbered among the nurseries of the Christian schools. The only imperial foundation which had a distinctly Christian character about it, appears to have been that which grew up at Constantinople, under the patronage of the Greek emperors. It was established in the Basilica of the Octagon, built by Constantine the Great, where an immense library was collected, which in Zeno’s time amounted to 120,000 volumes. Seven librarians and twelve professors were maintained at the public expense, and the college was presided over by a president, called the Œcumenicus, because he was supposed to be a sort of university in himself. The church attached to this academy was served by sixteen monks, and prelates were often chosen from the ranks of the professors to fill the first sees of the Empire. This noble foundation perished in 730, by the hands of Leo the Isaurian, who, finding that the academicians would not enter into his Iconoclastic views, and fearing their learning and their influence, caused fire to be applied to the building by night, so that the Basilica, the vast library, and the professors themselves, were all pitilessly consumed together.
But the parentage of the Christian schools is to be traced to less splendid sources than the Greek universities or the palace of the Cæsars. What these were has been indicated at the beginning of the chapter; the catechetical and the episcopal schools have been already spoken of, and we have now to examine how the work of education came to be embraced by the fathers of that monastic life which, like the canonical life of the clergy, found its first development among the followers of St. Mark. St. Chrysostom’s words, above quoted, show that in his time the monks of the East were already in the habit of receiving and training children. In the West, the work of education did not fall into the hands of the Church until the dissolution of the Roman Empire, when she saw herself obliged to open the doors of her episcopal and monastic schools to secular students. But one thing is evident, that from the first, the Western cœnobites had a certain organised system among them for the education of their own younger members and that the germ of the monastic school is to be found even in the deserts of Egypt. In the rule of St. Pachomius, special directions are given for the instruction of all those who shall come to the monastery. If ignorant of letters, they are to have the rule explained to them, and shall be sent to one who can teach them, and standing before him, shall diligently learn from him, with all thankfulness. After that they shall write for him letters, syllables, words, and names, and they shall be compelled to read, even if unwilling; there shall be no one in the monastery who shall not learn letters, and know something of the Scriptures, at least the New Testament and the Psalter.[22] Twice a week there were to be disputations; that is, spiritual conferences or catechisms. Here is evidently the origin of the interior or claustral school for the instruction of the younger or more ignorant of the monks; and the object of such very stringent regulations is better understood when we study the rest of the rule, and observe the great importance attached to the exercise of spiritual reading, which occupied almost as large a place in the horarium of St. Pachomius as prayer or manual labour.
Nor was this all. The rule of this great monastic legislator distinctly proves that children were received, and that at a very early age, to be educated among the monks. He felt great compassion, we are told, for the young, and was accustomed to say, that in the soil of their minds good seed might be sown more easily than in more advanced years. He considered them particularly capable of being trained to acquire the habit of the presence of God; by which they might afterwards advance to great perfection. Accordingly, his rule is full of provisions for the proper care of these young disciples. The monks are warned not to scandalise them, even by an incautious word: they are to have the recreation and food proper to their age, but the monks are not to sport or laugh with them; and if any boy be too much given to play and idleness, he is to receive sharp correction. They are to eat in the refectory with the brethren, and join them at their work, but at other times a sort of separation is to be observed between them and the community.[23] The terms on which the Fathers lived with their little disciples exhibit that character of paternal tenderness which was one of the distinctive features of the early Christian schools, offering a striking contrast to the state of things existing in the pagan academies. There is, indeed, frequent mention of the rod, but strict discipline was never held incompatible with affectionate familiarity. The Fathers of the Desert had received their traditions on this head from the immediate followers of Him who took the young children in His arms, and willingly suffered them to approach Him; and so it seemed but natural that they who sought to imitate their Master, should surround themselves with little ones, and permit them a certain holy familiarity which constantly reappears in the intercourse between monks and children. Every one will remember the anecdote that is told of St. Pachomius, who, in his extreme humility, did not disdain to be set right by a little boy. As he sat at work with his brethren, making mats, one of the children said to him, “My father, you are not working in the right way; the abbot Theodore does it quite differently.” “Then sit down, my child,” replied the saint, “and show me how I ought to do it;” and having received his lesson, he untwisted his osiers, and began his work all over again. Another time, the saint having returned to the monastery after an absence of some weeks, one of the children ran out to meet him, saying, “I am glad you have come back, my father; since you have been away they have given us neither soup nor vegetables for dinner.” “Well, my child,” was the kind reply, “I will take care that you do not want them for the future;” and calling the cook, he administered to him a sharp rebuke.
Sometimes, even solitaries were induced to undertake the care of children not intended for the religious state. Thus St. Chrysostom relates the example of a Christian lady living at Antioch, who was very desirous to procure for her son the blessings of a holy education, and induced a certain solitary to leave his retreat among the mountains, and undertake the care of the youth: and he adds, the boy made great progress in the sciences, but yet more in piety, and by his example won many of his playfellows to embrace a life of virtue. When, therefore, the great father of the monastic life in the Western world received his two disciples, Placidus and Maurus, with a view to their education, and so gave his followers an example which resulted in the foundation of the great Benedictine schools, he was not departing from the earlier monastic tradition, as Mabillon is careful to show.[24] Nor must the decrees of certain councils which prohibit monks from receiving any children, save those “offered” by their parents to the religious state, be understood as implying more than that such children could not be received into the interior or claustral school; for, as the same writer proves, seculars were always freely admitted into the exterior schools of monasteries.
St. Pachomius was not the only monastic legislator of ancient times who in his rule provided for the admission and education of children. St. Basil permitted them to be received into his monasteries at a very early age, especially if they had lost their parents, because monks should be the fathers of orphans. Their education, he says, should be strictly religious; they are to have a separate portion of the monastery assigned them, and are to be governed by one of the elder monks who shall be both mild and learned, and experienced in the care of children. He is very precise on the point which proves the crux in most systems of education, namely, the method to be observed in inflicting punishment; and though he does not prohibit the use of the rod, he recommends in preference the adoption of such penances as may correct the fault, as well as punish the offender. “Let every fault have its own remedy,” he says, “so that while the offence is punished the soul may be exercised to conquer its passions. For example, has a child been angry with his companion? Oblige him to beg pardon of the other and to do him some humble service, for it is only by accustoming them to humility that you will eradicate anger, which is always the offspring of pride. Has he eaten out of meals? Let him remain fasting for a good part of the day. Has he eaten to excess, and in an unbecoming manner? At the hour of repast, let him, without eating himself, watch others taking their food in a modest manner, and so he will be learning how to behave at the same time that he is being punished by his abstinence. And if he has offended by idle words, by rudeness, or by telling lies, let him be corrected by diet and silence.”
After this he passes on to the studies of the children, and desires that instead of learning the fables of the poets they should be taught the wonderful events narrated in Scripture History. They are to learn by heart sentences chosen from the Book of Proverbs, and little prizes are to be given them in reward for their exercises of memory, “to the end that they may learn with the less reluctance, nay rather with pleasure, and as though engaging in agreeable recreation.” The masters are particularly enjoined to train them to recall their wandering thoughts and fix their attention on their work, by frequently interrogating them as to what they are thinking about. And whilst acquiring a knowledge of letters, they are likewise to be taught some useful art or trade.[25]
In most of the rules drawn up by the early Gallican prelates we see that stringent regulations were introduced for obliging all the brethren to acquire a certain knowledge of letters. “Literas omnes discant,” is the thirty-second brief and emphatic rule of St. Aurelian, Bishop of Arles in the sixth century. What is more remarkable, we find exactly the same provisions in rules drawn up for religious women, as in those of St. Donatus and St. Cæsarius of Arles.[26] The sixth chapter of the rule of St. Leander of Seville, is headed thus: Ut jugiter virgo oret et legat. “Let your time and occupation be so divided,” he says, “that after reading you pray, and after prayer you read; and let these two good works perpetually alternate, so that no part of your time be wholly without them. And when you do any manual work or refresh your body with needful food, then let another read, that when the hands and the eyes are intent on work the ear may be fed with the Divine Word. For if even when we read and pray we are hardly able to withdraw our minds from the temptations of the devil, how much more prone will not the soul be to vice, if it be not held back by the chain of prayer and assiduous reading.”[27] And in the chapter that follows he gives directions for the proper manner of studying the books of the Old Testament.
Before bringing these remarks to a close we cannot omit all notice of the education received in primitive times by the children of the faithful, in the bosoms of their own families. Fleury points out to his readers as one proof of the care taken by Christian parents in the instruction of their children, that in all antiquity we do not find the least notice of any public catechism for children, or any public instruction for those who had been baptized before they came to the use of reason. It was not needed, he says, for in those days, to use the words of St. Chrysostom, “every house was a Church.”[28]